Mobile Broadband Benefits Will Accelerate Use of Mobile Social Networking
BARCELONA (Mobile World Congress, February 12, 2008) – ShoZu Inc., the leading provider of mobile social media services for exchanging content between mobile phones and Web-based social media sites, and Ubiquisys, developer of the ZoneGate intelligent 3G femtocell, today announced a partnership designed to extend the speed and cost benefits of Ubiquisys’ technology to mobile social networking.
The ability of mobile broadband to provide faster and less expensive data transfers is expected to fuel mass adoption of mobile-to-Web media sharing and other mobile social networking activities by lowering the barriers to mobile-based community interaction. The combined ShoZu/ZoneGate solution will be demonstrated at the Ubiquisys booth in Hall 1, Stand G19, at the Mobile World Congress that starts today in Barcelona.
Initially, the partnership has demonstrated how ShoZu users can quickly transfer photos and videos between the Web and the mobile using standard handsets and Ubiquisys ZoneGate femtocells that plug into the existing broadband connection. ZoneGate’s mobile broadband capabilities will provide near-instantaneous file delivery from the phone to community websites as well as in the other direction, dramatically shorten the time required to exchange multiple high-res images or other large files, and slash data transfer costs to VoIP-style rates.
The two companies also plan to work together to produce the first examples of a new generation of “Femto 2.0” services that will further simplify and enhance the mobile social networking and mobile-to-Web media sharing experience. These new services are expected to offer advanced mobile broadband capabilities such as:
- Home zone-only uploads of camera phone images. In this scenario, photo or video clip uploads from the mobile to the user’s preferred online communities will be automatically triggered when the user arrives home and within range of the femtocell. This will enable users to take advantage of lower-cost data transfers while also helping relieve bandwidth-intensive traffic on the operator’s cellular network.
- Home zone-only downloading of friends’ photos and other media feeds. Since ShoZu is a two-way service that allows mobile users to request automatic delivery of photos, updated social network profiles and other Web content to their handsets, it can be configured to deliver those files only when the mobile is within femtocell range. Again, this will save users money by enabling data transfers to be charged at Internet rates instead of cellular rates.
- Media sharing between the home network and the mobile. Because femtocell technology uses the broadband connection, it will be able to tap into the home networking capabilities of the broadband router to allow file exchange between the mobile and home network devices such as PCs and media servers. Users will be able to send photos or videos from their phones to their computers, download photos from their computers to their handsets, and so on.
“We see the potential of femtocells as being far more than coverage and capacity. That’s why we are building a services platform from the outset, and it’s why we are announcing a partnership with ShoZu to develop the first of a new generation of femto-enabled mobile social media services,” said Chris Gilbert, Ubiquisys CEO. “These services have the potential to drive broad usage of mobile broadband at home and thereby plant the seeds for adoption on the move.”
“Any technology that speeds content exchange between the mobile and the Internet is going to be in high demand with the increasing convergence between the two platforms. Today it appears that femtocells will be the solution of choice,” said ShoZu CEO Mark Bole. “This partnership with Ubiquisys positions us to bring the full benefits of this new technology to our users and continue to lead the industry in providing the best possible mobile social media experience.”
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